Let me start by linking to 2 official sources, if you want the full details as presented:
Second Dinner's Youtube video.
Second Dinner's text article.
Now, let's get down to some analysis and other information. We have the following quote on the "official" discord from one of the developers, Stephen:
In the linked article, however, it is stated that pool 4 (series 4) cards are 10 times more rare than pool 3 cards. Prior, pool 3 cards have averaged to roughly 1 card in 48 Collection Level (CL) at CL 1500+. Ten(10) times more rare means 1 per 480 CL...40 caches at 1 per 12 CL also works out to 480 CL, worst case.
So what does it cost to get 480 CL? Well, if we ignore grey to green (common to uncommon) upgrades, we get 1 CL per 50 credits (This may be changing also...). Thus, to get 480 CL, we expect to have to spend 24k credits. However, every 12 CL gives us a guaranteed 50 credit rebate, and on average we get 32 credits from each reserve, putting us at 82 credits refund on average per 12 CL. Multiplying this by the 40 CL, we expect to get 3280 credits back, and thus need to earn 20,720 credits from things other than the collection track to randomly get 1 pool4 card. A normal week is 4850 credits if we do every quest, and so if this were the only way to get pool4 cards, we'd expect to get roughly 1 per month. This is still ignoring ranked rewards, season pass rewards and season caches. This may seem slow, but...
In this time, we also expect to get 4520 of the new collectors tokens if we are full collection, and 1000 if we are not full collection yet. What are collectors tokens if you didn't read the article? They are the new card acquisition targeting system. The costs are as follows:
- Pool 3 Card: 1000 Tokens
- Pool 4 Card: 3000 Tokens Pool-4 Card Guide
- Pool 5 Card: 6000 Tokens
If we are just focusing on pool-4 cards, that means we've gotten another 1.5 cards from collectors tokens per month if we are full collection, putting us at 2.5 cards per month - or another 1/3rd of a card if we are not full collection, meaning 1.33 cards per month.
That said, we are all getting some free tokens when it hits the game:
- 500-999 CL: 3,000 Tokens (or as soon as you hit 500 CL, you will get this)
- 1000-2999 CL: 6,000 Tokens
- 3000+ CL: 12,000 Tokens
And past that, some people may have credits stored up...either sitting at 5k credits and/or have unclaimed rewards from ranked, season pass, or collection track...and of course, people can pay to accelerate collection track as well.
These options will be in our shop and rotate every 8 hours. However, if you see a card you really want, but do not have the tokens for, you can freeze that card in the shop. Past this, the current plan is for card to go through a full rotation in the shop before repeating, as a means of getting to every possible card you could want before duplicate offerings come up. Check that shop often if you are after a specific card! Also worth noting that pools 4 and 5 will derank (lower a pool) over time - but we do not know how long this will take, or if different cards will have different schedules for this.
We do know that season pass cards will move to pool-5 as soon as they leave the season pass, which gives a chance to pull that as your first pool-5 card...some people expect these cards to only remain in pool-5 for 1 month, then move to pool-4, but nothing is known for sure.
So let's talk about pool-5...according to the article, they are 10x as rare as pool-4, so instead of 1 per 480 CL, we're looking at 1 per 4800 CL. Instead of an after-rebate expected cost of 20,720, we're looking at a rough average of 207,000 credits per pool5 card...and there has been no mention as of yet of a pity timer to even guarantee this. To get this fully off of collection track, we are talking 3 years or so (so say 1 per 8months playing). It will feel great if you highroll one, but it seems much more likely to get all of these from the rotating token store. The initial release will have 6 cards in pool-5.
Update: It has been recently brought to my attention that a developer made this comment yesterday:
- Additional cards will still be added 1/week after the launch of Tokens.
While I knew this was always the plan, it is not clear if that starts the week of/after tokens launch...but that could clearly make it far longer to obtain a "full collection" and we'd need to be more selective.
So what should we do about this?!
It is impossible for me to tell anyone what they should do, so instead, I will simply state some points from the above math.
- If your goal is to have a full collection ASAP, aim to spend collector tokens only on pool-5 until you have them all. Second Dinner says you can just skip these and "wait for them to move to pool-4". This may be necessary with more pool-5 cards coming, so may still need to prioritize what you want.
- If you really want a card...power to you, play the game for fun.
- If you just want the most powerful cards...I don't think I need to say much to you - look around and decks and such!
Oh, and Ben Brode said on twitter that they are hoping to have this live before the new season...added note - leaving un-purchased season pass cards gives you a chance to get that as a pool-5 pull, which will feel real bad.